Two streets in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, are set to be renamed following sustained complaints regarding their commemoration of Nazi figures, local officials have announced.
The decision was reached by the town council on Wednesday after a “secret vote,” according to local media reports. This followed the release of a locally commissioned report which concluded that maintaining the street names was unconstitutional.
The streets are currently named after Josef Reiter, a composer, and Franz Resl, an entertainer, both of whom were members of the Nazi party.
Approximately 200 households will be affected by the change and will receive new addresses.
The Austrian government has faced long-standing criticism from historians regarding its approach to acknowledging its role in World War II, particularly for portraying itself as a victim rather than an active participant.
The planned renaming has been lauded by the Mauthausen Committee as a “decision with symbolic significance.” At least 90,000 prisoners were killed by the Nazis at the Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria between 1938 and 1945.
Willi Mernyi, chairman of the Mauthausen Committee, told local media that his organization had “worked hard for this” and expressed gratitude to all supporters.
Robert Eiter, a committee member, noted that the committee had proposed renaming the streets in honor of Austrian individuals who actively resisted the Nazis, specifically Lea Olczak, a former deputy mayor whose father perished in Mauthausen, and Maria Stromberger, who joined the resistance while working as the head nurse at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
While numerous streets in Austria with Nazi associations have already been renamed, including one honoring Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the luxury car company, in Linz, some still retain their original names, 80 years after the end of World War II.
During World War II, approximately 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed in the Holocaust, during which the Nazi party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, sought to eradicate Jewish, Slavic, and Roma populations from Europe.
During the war, the Nazi regime systematically murdered more than six million Jewish people.
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